Rev. Eric Anderson Pastor's Corner, Sermons

Sermon: Out of Joint

October 19, 2025

Genesis 32:22-31
Luke 18:1-8

One of the things that is hard to appreciate in a translation is the presence of puns.

Some of you are thinking that you don’t appreciate puns no matter what the language is.

But we are missing something here. John E. Anderson tells us at Working Preacher, “There is a delightful Hebrew wordplay: at Jabbok (yabok) a ‘man’ wrestled (yabeq) Jacob (y’qob).”

Yabok. Yabeq. Yaqov. Like Dr. Anderson, to whom I’m not related as far as I know, I call that delightful. You may disagree. What we can probably agree is that the author chose those words to call attention to this story, in which Jacob received a new name, Yisrael, “one who wrestles with God,” and that prompts Jacob to name his opponent as God, and further prompts him to give a new name to that place.

No longer Yaqov – Israel. No longer an unidentified Yabeq – Elohim, or God. No longer the ford of the Yabok, but now Peniel, the face of God.

Are you convinced yet that something important is going on here?

Jacob is one of the Bible’s more colorful characters. He’d purchased his brother’s birthright for a bowl of stew, which I suppose you could call shrewd bargaining but I think you could also call it taking advantage of your brother. He’d fooled his vision-impaired father to receive his all-important blessing, which I think we’d have to call fraud. He’d been fooled himself by his father-in-law over which daughter he was to marry, become a father by four women in a family dynamic which means that the phrase “Biblical family values” doesn’t necessary mean “healthy and happy,” and when gathering his family to return home, had once again defrauded his father-in-law so that he journeyed with big flocks of sheep and goats.

This is the underdog that we cheer for. This is also the hero whose actions we cringe at.

This is someone who’d been wrestling with everybody he met for his entire life. That might feel familiar sometimes.

As Amy Frykolm writes at JourneyWithJesus.net, “If we turn to the Bible for assurance that life will be easy and comfortable, and every prayer will be answered and God’s blessing will continually rain down upon us, the story of Jacob is not the place to look. What we can take from this story is that the struggle within us—those dark nights of the soul—is holy. We live in and with a God who is willing to be intimate in that struggle, to engage the mystery of ourselves, and to bless the struggle even as it wounds us.”

One of the blessings of Scripture is its reality. I’m not saying that every word is literally true – the parables of Jesus, for example, are fictions. Meaningful fictions, fictions which illustrate truth, but still intentional fictions. What I mean by reality is the way that Scripture doesn’t shy away from rock and sand, from heat and cold, from sweat and blood. When I read this story I can just about hear Jacob’s heart racing and his breath heaving. I can almost feel the tearing feeling of his wrenched hip. I can just about sense his desperation to get through the night. Just to get through the night.

As Callie Plunket-Brewton writes at Working Preacher, “Dark nights of the soul are part of the human experience, and few escape them. Whether we battle adversaries psychological or physical, the dawn does still come.”

We know what it is like to wrestle with the world.

We also have some idea what it is like to lose. As morning approached, Jacob’s hip was put out of joint. I’ve already mentioned that Jacob had been wrestling with everybody he ever met. Now he found himself out of joint with the world.

But there he was. Estranged from his birth family. Estranged from his family of marriage. Living with rivalry and dissension in his household. On the verge of a potentially violent collision with his outraged and defrauded brother. The reality of his hip matched the reality of his relationships.

Jacob was out of joint with the world.

So what do we do when we’re out of joint with the world?

I think we do what Jacob did. We hold on.

As Beth L. Tanner writes at Working Preacher, “Life is sometimes like that. Things happen that cannot be rationalized or easily understood. We survive by nothing more elegant than not giving up.”

We hold on.

Jacob had lost, but not lost all his strength. He wasn’t going to win, and he didn’t. He just held on.

We hold on.

There are a lot of ways in which I feel out of joint with the world these days. In lots of cultures in lots of periods of time, people grieved visibly. They might wear special clothing, or they might perform certain ritual actions. Others could see that their friends were in mourning. They could see that their neighbors were out of joint with the world.

As you know, last weekend I was at my stepmother’s funeral. I’ve been grieving. I’ve been out of joint. I know some of you probably are, too.

So what do we do?

We hold on. Next Sunday we will observe our All Saints Sunday. During that service, we read the names of those who have died since last October, and we light a candle for them. Further, there is a time when we come forward to light candles for those who’ve gone before, until the soft glow begins to rival the daylight. As we do so we hold on to memory, and we hold on to love. We hold on to the hope and faith that God will restore us to one another again in the fullness of time.

We hold on.

Yesterday I put on a clerical collar and stood along Kamehameha Avenue and waved and made the shaka and talked with people and said, “Thank you for coming” along with hundreds of folks who came out to declare their commitment to No Tyrants. We stretched about a half a mile along the street, and yes, there were people dressed as inflatable creatures. Thank you, Portland.

I was there to hold on.

I was there to hold on to an imperfect republic with all its messiness against a burgeoning and merciless autocracy. I was there to hold on to a tenuous commitment to justice for people of all races, nationalities, genders, and identities against growing prejudice and oppression. I was there to hold on to the hope for a society in which everyone would receive due process of law. I was there to hold on to the idea that peaceful demonstration is both moral and effective at improving the laws and mores of a nation.

Was I, were we, successful?

According to Corina Knoll of the New York Times, “When asked if the president had a comment on the demonstrations, Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman, gave a brief response in an email. ‘Who cares?’ she said.”

Not successful yet.

Hold on.

What if our conflict is with someone bigger than the president of the United States, though? What if it’s with God?

Again: Hold on.

George Peck, who was President of Andover Newton Theological School when I was a student there back in the late 80’s, came from Australia and taught me the meaning of the song “Waltzing Matilda.” He also taught me and all the rest of my colleagues about the down times of faith. While he served as a Baptist missionary and teacher in India, he told us, he lost his faith. He simply no longer believed in what he was doing. What did he do?

He held on. Not to the faith, which wasn’t there. He held on to the things that he did out of the faith he’d had. He kept teaching. He kept preaching. He kept praying. He didn’t know if his faith would come back. But he knew that if he did the things of faith, he’d recognize faith when (or if) it returned.

He held on. And his faith did return.

Jacob held on until the morning, and he was blessed. Dr. Peck held on until his faith grew again, and he was blessed. We’ll hold on until this attempt at autocracy is defeated, and we will be blessed. We’ll hold on to love and memory next Sunday and every day, and we will be blessed.

Hold on, friends. Hold on.

Be blessed.

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

Pastor Eric tends to improvise while preaching, sometimes intentionally. The recording will not exactly match the prepared text.


The image is Jacob and the Angel by Annette Gandy Fortt, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=56023 [retrieved October 19, 2025]. Original source: annettefortt.com.

Rev. Eric Anderson Sermons

Sermon: Persistence

July 27, 2025

Hosea 1:2-10
Luke 11:1-13

Is persistence a virtue?

Sometimes it seems like the virtue that remains when all other virtues have been suppressed. When people face active resistance in their quest to do what is good, and right, and true, persistence in trying to do well may be all you can do. It’s the noble but doomed attempt to scatter the clouds of evil when those clouds are just beyond our reach.

On the other hand, persistence can be a real problem. “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again,” goes the old maxim. Which is fine in some cases, but what if you’re trying to do something you shouldn’t? What if you’re trying to go through red lights? What if you’re trying to steal? What if you’re trying to walk on water?

Jesus managed that last one and so, briefly, did Simon Peter, but if I were to “try, try again” the most likely thing I’d achieve is two lungs full of water. Which I’d rather not achieve.

I’m often in favor of a revised version of the old proverb: “If at first you don’t succeed, try something different.” Experimentation means that failure teaches you something and opens up other possibilities, rather than putting you in a dreary cycle of repeated failure.

Which is fine if you’re trying to do something new, but doesn’t work if you’re trying to maintain your priorities, ethics, values, and commitment to God. Yes, all of those change and grow, but there sometimes comes a point where we go back to that virtue of persistence. Say what you want, people of power. I will do what is right.

In mid-19th century America, it was persistence of that kind that rescued enslaved people from the plantations. In 16th century Europe, it was persistence of that kind that sustained the Protestant movements and offered new possibilities for faithful living. In first century Jerusalem, it was that kind of persistence on God’s part that refused to accept the rejection of Jesus’ crucifixion and transformed it into God’s open door of Jesus’ resurrection.

I’m quite grateful for that kind of persistence.

Jesus raised persistence in the context of prayer. One of his followers asked him to teach them to pray. As D. Mark Davis writes at LeftBehindAndLovingIt, “This request – and the practice of John the Baptizer that he references in the request – presupposes that there is an actual, teachable skill to praying, as well as a disposition that is appropriate to the person pray-er and a disposition that the pray-er ought to suppose about God.” Jesus responded with an outline for prayer that we have generally memorized and pray as the “Lord’s Prayer.” We tend to use the version from Matthew’s Gospel, which is somewhat longer. Both follow the similar outline of praising God’s goodness first, then asking for God’s realm to be established on earth. We ask then for the basic necessities of bread and of God’s forgiveness before closing with the request that we be protected from at least some of the world’s suffering.

If you pray the Lord’s Prayer and extend it with the particulars of your situation, I think you’ll be doing what Jesus taught his followers to do.

But there’s a potential problem. As Debie Thomas writes at JourneyWithJesus.net, “Read the wrong way, the lection renders prayer transactional, inviting us to believe that God is a cosmic gumball machine into which we can insert our prayers like so many shiny quarters.” Worse, it makes it sound like God has to be cajoled and badgered into responding to our prayers. If you read the sleeping neighbor as representing God in Jesus’ story, and read the persistence of his needy friend as representing our appropriate approach to prayer, well. It makes God sound both unresponsive and uncaring.

This is a God one worships because one is establishing credit with the Divine. “Look, I’ve worshiped you for years,” I can say. “Now I’ve got trouble, and it’s your turn to deliver.”

Here’s my shiny quarter. Cough up the gumball, God.

But Jesus didn’t say that.

Often when Jesus began a parable, he’d use a phrase like, “To what should I compare the kingdom of God?” That was an invitation to consider the actions of the characters in the parable, and see whether one of them might be more… God-like… than the others. But Jesus didn’t begin this story that way. He just launched into it. When it was done, he went on to point out that people know how to do better than the characters in the story. Rather than having to be irritated into responding, parents know how to give their children things that are good for them rather than harmful.

If people can do that, so can God. In fact, God can do it better. Better than kind and loving parents. Much better than sleepy grumpy neighbors.

God doesn’t need to be prodded into response, said Jesus. God is right there even as we pray.

Brian Peterson writes at Working Preacher, “It will not do to think that prayer works either because we continue to hound God about something or because we are so shameless in our asking. We are not the key that makes prayer ‘work.’ If we keep asking, seeking, and knocking, it is only because God has done so first, and continues to do so. We need to hear this parable in concert with verses 9-13, which make clear that God is good, and that God is eager to give not simply the good things that we might ask for.”

Eager indeed. But why, then, did Jesus raise persistence? And repeat it with a similar story later about a widow and an unjust judge?

Elisabeth Johnson writes at Working Preacher, “God is all-powerful, yet God is not the only power in the world. There are other powers at work, the powers of Satan and his demons, the powers of evil and death, often manifested in human sin. Although God has won the ultimate victory over these powers through the death and resurrection of Jesus, the battle still rages on. Consequently, God’s will can be — and often is — thwarted.

“Why bother to pray, then, if God’s will can be thwarted? Again we affirm what Scripture tells us, and particularly what Jesus tells us in this passage: that we are invited into relationship with a loving God who wants to give us life, and who continues to work tirelessly for our redemption and that of all creation.”

You know, it would be simpler to deal with a gumball machine God, one who responds predictably to a shiny prayer with something sweet. A predictable God; a predictable world. If we know anything about God, though, it’s that predictability isn’t one of God’s primary attributes. After all, we believe we’re made in the image of God. Are you predictable? Are the members of your ‘ohana? Your friends?

I mean, I’m fairly predictable here in a pulpit on Sunday, but that’s the nature of the role, not the person. I surprise myself from time to time.

If I can surprise you, then God can surprise you and even more so.

Debie Thomas observes that the only promise Jesus made in this Scripture was that God’s Holy Spirit would be, will be, is given to those who ask. “So here’s the question for us,” she writes. “Do we consider the ‘yes’ of God’s Spirit a sufficient response to our prayers? If God’s guaranteed answer to our petitions is God’s own self, can we live with that?

“I’ll be honest: sometimes I can, and sometimes I can’t.  It’s not easy to let go of my transactional, gumball God — idol though he is… I want God to sweep in and fix everything much more than I want God’s Spirit to fill and accompany me so that I can do my part to heal the world. Resting in God’s yes requires vulnerability, patience, courage, discipline and trust — traits I can only cultivate in prayer.”

That’s why persistence with God is so important. It’s not about God’s response to us – that’s coming to us. God loves us. God cares for us. God wants the best for us before we ever say a word in prayer.

We, however, have to make an effort to open ourselves up, to look and recognize the Holy Spirit’s presence, to accept the strength, reassurance, and grace that the Holy Spirit brings. God is not a magic talisman to be invoked and suddenly the world is changed. God is someone to be embraced and suddenly our soul is changed.

Some time ago, Momi Lyman gave me a magic wand for Christmas. It sits on my desk waiting for me to use it. Unfortunately, I still haven’t found the instruction manual, and the world goes on as it will.

I have, however, listened to Jesus’ teaching about how to pray. Prayer isn’t magic. It doesn’t change the world to my liking. It took some practice to become not proficient, but persistent, in prayer.

And I’ve been changed.

Amen.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Sermon

Pastor Eric departs from the prepared text from time to time. Sometimes he means to.

The image is An etching by Jan Luyken illustrating Luke 11:5-8 in the Bowyer Bible, Bolton, England (1795). Bowyer Bible photos contributed to Wikimedia Commons by Phillip Medhurst – Photo by Harry Kossuth, FAL, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7550704.

Rev. Eric Anderson What I'm Thinking

What I’m Thinking: Persistence

Jesus encouraged his followers to practice persistence so that people’s needs get met.

Here’s a transcript:

I’m thinking about the eleventh chapter of Luke’s Gospel (Luke 11:1-13) and about one of the stories that Jesus told in that chapter.

Imagine somebody who had gone to bed, he said. All his family, all his children, were already snug and sleeping. A neighbor came to the door and began to knock. He said that a visitor, a relative, had come, and that he had nothing to put on the table before him. The man in the house protested that everybody was in bed and asleep and there was nothing he could do; wait until morning! But the man at the door kept knocking and calling.

Because of his persistence, said Jesus, the man in the house would get up and bring him the things that he needed.

Persistence.

Jesus told other stories about persistence: about a woman who persisted in her complaints to a judge who didn’t care. Persistence is one of the valuable traits of human beings. I grant you that persistence at young ages can be, well, let’s just say it: annoying and frustrating when that two and three-year old persists and persists and persists in that demand for candy. A demand that we can’t meet, at least not meet and be the loving and considerate parents that we want to be, because a diet based on candy won’t do the child or, for that matter, the rest of us any good.

In Jesus’ story the need was real. I mean, to us in the modern day it sounds a little thin. I mean, the man could easily have gone down the street to the 24 hour store — except there was no such thing in the first century. The man could have — well, what could he do?

Except to go to a neighbor and a friend and to get help. And it was a real need because hospitality was such an important part of daily life in the first century.

So what are the needs that we have in our time that require us to persist? It’s not likely to be that kind of hospital hospitality (although it might). It might be the needs that arise when a loved one is ill, and there are things that we need to do to take care of them, and some of the other needs of our household: we’re going to look to others for their assistance.

It might be the needs in the community, where there people that just don’t have the skills, or the health, or whatever it is that allows them to find shelter, and to find food, and to live as dignified a life as they can. They are the ones who need our assistance, who need us to trouble ourselves from our comfort and even our rest, in order to see that they can come to a dignified and productive life within our community.

And for far too many in the world, the need is peace. For some it is because they literally live beneath the shadows of war. For others it is because they live with the threat of violence, sometimes from loved ones, sometimes from threats of the outside.

They are knocking on our door. They are calling for our aid. Can we stir ourselves from our comfort and let them in?

That’s what I’m thinking. I’m curious to hear what you’re thinking. Leave me your thoughts in the comment section below. I’d love to hear from you.